Trump in San Juan: 'I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack'

10/03/2017

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During a visit to Puerto Rico on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said the disaster aid for the island had "thrown our budget a little out of whack."

President Donald Trump during a visit to Puerto Rico on Tuesday said the humanitarian-aid response in the Caribbean island and US territory had "thrown our budget a little out of whack."

"I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack, because we've spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico," Trump said.

He quickly added: "That's fine — we've saved a lot of lives."

Trump went on to compare the devastation in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria last month to that of Hurricane Katrina in the continental US in 2005, saying relatively few people had died as a result of the storm and ensuing loss of power, destruction of infrastructure, and widespread flooding.

"Every death is a horror," Trump said, "but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous — hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here with really a storm that was just totally overpowering ... and what is your death count?"

Gov. Ricardo Rossello, seated beside the president, said there had been 16 confirmed deaths on the island, a number that is expected to rise.

"Sixteen people versus in the thousands," Trump said. "You can be very proud."

Trump's first public response to the devastation in the US territory came five days after Hurricane Maria hit, in a series of tweets in which he focused on Puerto Rico's weak infrastructure and economy.

Days later, he attacked the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz, after she criticized the inefficiency of the federal government's relief efforts and asked Trump to send more help more quickly.

"Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help," he tweeted on Saturday. "They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job."

Trump also argued that the mayor was criticizing him because she had "been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump."